TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pollatos, Olga
A1  - Gramann, Klaus
T1  - Attenuated modulation of brain activity accompanies emotion regulation deficits in alexithymia
JF  - Psychophysiology : journal of the Society for Psychophysiological Research
N2  - The personality trait alexithymia has been associated with deficits in emotion regulation; nevertheless, experimental investigations on this research question are sparse. We investigated reappraisal as one emotion regulation strategy in 44 healthy participants with high (HDA) versus low (LDA) degrees of alexithymia. High density EEG and spatiotemporal current density reconstruction were used to characterize the time course of emotion regulation and to identify brain regions involved. Main results were that reappraisal was accompanied by reduced arousal and significant amplitude reduction of P3 and slow wave in the LDA group only. In contrast to the LDA group, reappraisal was not associated with an increase of activation in fusiform gyrus and inferior temporal gyrus in the HDA group. We demonstrate profound deficits in emotion regulation, which might contribute to everyday problems of social functioning in alexithymia.
KW  - Alexithymia
KW  - Emotion regulation
KW  - Reappraisal
KW  - Evoked potentials
KW  - Current source density reconstruction
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.2011.01348.x
SN  - 0048-5772
VL  - 49
IS  - 5
SP  - 651
EP  - 658
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - Hoboken
ER  -